Relic review from someone who never played Talisman | Relic | BoardGameGeek: Actually, “the Trader ended up being corrupted by chaos long before the end of the game due to a string of bad encounters” is the point. This is not a systems game where the art and theme are there to make the gears look cheery—Relic is the page numbers and paragraphs of a choose-your-own-adventure novel rolled out onto a board and stacked in decks of cards to be accessed by the roll of the die. The game is about the random, emergent narrative, no two alike. The story is the prize you leave the table with, win or lose. Some of my most cherished gaming memories are from years-old Talisman games where the absurdity and awfulness of the adventure dwarfed any feeling of “accomplishment” the winner might have felt. (It’s important to note that I cannot recall who won which games; I have only the memory of my wretched circumstances. And those stories warm my heart.)

Publications of Cathy N. Davidson: C.N. Davidson, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn (Viking Press June 2011 publication date) (2010) [org]